Her approach mirrors the biblio-poetry therapy model. She takes in a poem which provides ‘a shape’ or a model. She described precisely the experience I’ve had in groups – that ‘the poem makes an imprint and the reader’s own poem pops up in its place’. (That’s what I noted down but Kate may have said it slightly differently.)

She said she doesn’t ask students ‘to write about their feelings’. That to me is more in the domain of journalling, open and to some extent free-floating. What responding to a specific poem does, is create structure, suggest concrete imagery and enable feelings to come through in a more precise way.

I’ve found that when we’ve spent time talking about a poem in a group, there’s an internal pressure to write one’s own that builds up so that when the invitation to write is made, poems spring almost fully-formed. The image that comes into my mind, are footprints on the beach being filled by the sea, the shape remaining but blurring.

We then read I Cannot Remember My Mother by Rabindranath Tagore and each wrote a poem using the opening words ‘I don’t remember …’ as a prompt. When we shared, the room filled with memories and the ghosts of our pasts, all that is there and not there. Laughter, tears, poetry.